David Niven (35 page)

She was paranoid about eating in front of other people. ‘I couldn't face people. I couldn't face eating. I'd stay in my room, drinking, making telephone calls. I hardly went out. Going out was sometimes the most terrifying thing for me. I had panic attacks going outside. I had panic attacks in the night. I was on Valium, and when you take that you shouldn't drink because it can kill you. It is a wonder I am still alive.'

David found it increasingly difficult to cope with her. He told me in 1980, ‘I wanted to love her, and I did, and I still do, but often I just want to get out of the house and get away from her. She isn't good company, and she can't do anything. What she can do is make herself look very good, and she can arrange flowers. But that's all.'

One person who did like Hjördis was Princess Grace who became most concerned about her and wanted to help. David recalled, ‘Grace said to me, “I'll talk
men
with her. Just girl talk.” I said,
“Any
kind of talk. Please, Grace, just do
something.'”

Hjördis told me, ‘One of my best friends was Grace. I felt comfortable with her. We talked a lot about men. She was a very naughty girl, you know. She had a lot of affairs in Hollywood. She had an affair with David.'

But David admitted to me that he had to take the blame for many of Hjördis's troubles, although he was not to blame for the childhood trauma that was the root cause of all her problems. He said he was the one who strayed long before she started taking lovers. He was even unfaithful to Primmie. That was his fatal character flaw.

But he didn't give up on Hjördis. She told me, ‘David asked me what would make me happy. I said I couldn't just
be
happy. But I thought that adopting another girl would help. We found a beautiful little baby girl, just four months old, and an orphan. We called her Fiona.

‘I had really grown to love Kristina. It was hard at first because of the circumstances, but it wasn't her fault, and I really loved her, and I loved Fiona right from the start. I wasn't a good mother. I had no real idea what a mother does, but I made sure they were always dressed very nicely. The best French clothes. I was so proud of them. Having the girls helped me a lot. Things were better between David and I, and we started to laugh together a lot more.'

Fiona was adopted in December 1963. She was four months old. By this time David's sons were living in America. David Jnr was working in New York at the William Morris Agency, and Jamie, 18 years of age, was about to go to Harvard University. David saw very little of his sons as he was so busy making films in Europe.

In 1966 David started to write his autobiography. What he really wanted to do was write a novel but his friend Jamie Hamilton encouraged him to write his own life story and said he was enthusiastic to publish it. Writing
The Moon's a Balloon
was to prove to be a long and difficult process for David who, despite wanting desperately to be a successful author, found the process of writing harder than acting. He was almost relieved to set aside work on his book every time he took off to make another film. Two years after he started writing his memoir, Hamilton wrote to him asking how the book was coming along and Niven admitted it was not coming on at all well.

His friends, his two daughters, his painting and his films – as bad as many of those films were – were the things that made Niven happy but Hjördis was bringing him nothing but misery. ‘I had been thinking again about divorcing her but things improved when we had the girls,' he said in 1980. ‘Friends have often said I should just leave her, but they don't know how fragile she is. I wanted to leave her often but I thought that if I did it would not only destroy her but perhaps the girls as well. There was no way out. Now, I think it's till death do us part.'

Hjördis's health deteriorated further. She said,

I had blackouts. I was told they were epileptic fits. I was so scared of having a fit that I preferred to just stay at home. I could swim and I liked to paint. But I was in fear of blacking out. People thought I blacked out because I drank heavily, but one of the reasons I drank so much was to
stop
the fits. Richard Burton had fits and he told me that alcohol helped to stop them. So I drank more.

I took lovers. I was sick and tired of David's infidelity. I didn't want him to make love to me, but I needed to have intimacy. I shut him out. We were our own worse enemies to each other.

I have to say, though, he was a wonderful father. Not perfect, no father is perfect. What he did for the children was buy them presents, make them laugh when he was with them. But he was away a lot making movies.

David admitted that he had once harboured thoughts that Hjördis might actually solve all their problems for them both by dying. ‘I was convinced that she would kill herself, and then I wouldn't have to divorce her. Isn't that terrible, to think that? But you do think terrible things when life is so bad.'

She made an attempt to be a good mother to her girls. She said she knew she fell far short, but she tried. ‘I played games with my girls. I played
gin rummy and canasta with Kristina. I think I made them laugh. Kristina understands my sense of humour.

‘I used to wear a little disc around my neck that said I was allergic to penicillin. So I had it engraved, “I am always allergic to penicillin and sometimes also to my husband.” It was a joke. Some laughed. Some gasped in horror.'

She gladly credited David as being the parent who successfully raised the girls, and she had accepted, by 1986, that her daughters may even have grown to hate her.

I can understand if they feel I wasn't a good mother. I tried not to let my illness concern them. I had trouble showing my love to my girls. I had trouble being intimate with them. David was able to hug and kiss them. I had trouble being intimate with my own children.

When the girls went to school, David took them and collected them. I wanted to, but I couldn't get out of the house. When Kristina was older she tried to get me to go out with her. Just to get out of the house. To go and have lunch. But I got more and more frightened of leaving the house.

I know you shouldn't play favourites, and I do love both my girls. But I think Kristina understood me more, and perhaps I felt that because she had David's blood she was almost my own. It's very painful now for me to think how I could have done everything better. I just have to accept things. I'm a recovering alcoholic and I have forgiven David for all he did – and I'm trying to forgive myself.

In March 1969 David made a concerted effort to concentrate on his book by taking a break from films. Jamie Hamilton was delighted with the first two chapters but progress was slow and there was little more to read by November when David flew to England to make a film that ended up being cancelled because of industrial unrest at the British film studios. Convinced his film career was at an end, he spent the winter at Château d'Oex writing.

In April 1970 he flew to Rome to film
The Statue
. He played a professor whose wife, a sculptress, produces a huge statue of him but with genitals which are not his, and so he sets about trying to find out who they belong to. ‘Not for prudes, but a fast-moving package of fun,' wrote William Hall in London's
Evening News
. The
Daily Express
disagreed; ‘I am happy to say that David Niven looks thoroughly uncomfortable about the whole sorry business.'

He wasn't uncomfortable at all. He told me, ‘I had fun making it. I
always
try to have fun, otherwise what would be the point? If people go to see it and enjoy it, that's a bonus.'

Throughout 1970 Jamie Hamilton urged him to finish the book, but he still hadn't completed it when he came to London later in the year, which was when I first met him. He didn't even mention the book to me and when I reminded him of that some years later, he said, ‘I didn't think it was worth mentioning because I wasn't at all sure I would ever finish it.'

I did find out about it, however, when my managing director Ron Lee read the transcript of the lengthy interview I had done with him and thought it could be the basis of a book. In reply to Ron Lee's letter asking if he would object if I wrote his biography, David very kindly wrote, ‘I would have been delighted to give my permission if it wasn't for the fact that someone far less creative and yet infuriatingly lazy is already at it as we speak. To be frank, me!'

David later told me that he was convinced that his autobiography was doomed because he thought it was incredibly dull. Jamie Hamilton didn't think so; he wrote to David to tell him that everyone in his office who had read the finished chapters thought it was hilarious and entertaining. Showbiz columnist Roddy Mann even convinced his own literary agent, George Greenfield, to take Niven on as a client. David, who had once been insecure as an actor, was now highly insecure as an author.

George Greenfield discovered that Cresset Press, who published
Round the Rugged Rocks
, had the first option to buy his next book. Greenfield wrote to Cresset, telling them he was Niven's agent and that Niven had written a very long manuscript, written by hand, full of rambling reminiscences, and asked if Cresset wanted to read it. They said they didn't, leaving the way open for Jamie Hamilton to publish it.

David finished the book at the end of February 1971 and was rewarded with a cheque for £7,500 as an advance on royalties. Although the book was very entertaining, it needed a lot of editorial work. Whole chunks were cut, which David objected to, but several years later, David told me that if it hadn't been for a man called Roger Machell who edited the book, ‘it would never have been the success it is.'

The book's title,
The Moon's a Balloon
, had no relevance to anything in the book but was simply a line from a poem by E.E. Cummings which begins, ‘Who knows if the moon's a balloon?' It simply appealed to him.

He got back to his main career, acting, and starred with Gina Lollobrigida in
King, Queen, Knave
as a husband and wife who take in his teenage nephew, played by John Moulder Brown. The young man and his stepmother become lovers and together they plan to murder the uncle. The film, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, was admired by some critics. ‘It
would have been hard to predict that David Niven, Gina Lollobrigida and John Moulder Brown would have teamed so brilliantly in Skolimowski's idiosyncratic style of farce,' said the
Times
. The
Observer
thought it was ‘made with grace and style'. But it didn't appeal to the public and became another of Niven's obscure films.

The Moon's a Balloon
was published in October 1971 at which time Niven attended a launch party for book critics, columnists and booksellers but spent most of his time talking to the booksellers because he knew they were the ones he needed to impress the most. He had them roaring with laughter at his stories and they went away determined the book would be a best seller.

The reviews were literally raves, but it was his TV appearance on the
Michael Parkinson Show
, which I went to, that sealed the book's success. The next day sales rocketed and the book was reprinted. It stayed at number one on the bestseller lists for weeks and was reprinted again.

He was eager to write another book but he was adamant that it would be a novel. However, G.P. Putnam, who published
The Moon's a Balloon
in America, urged him to write a second memoir, detailing the golden age of Hollywood. They offered him a large advance to do so which he accepted and so began writing
Bring on the Empty Horses
. He told me he only accepted Putnam's offer because he wanted the money.

Now he was a successful author and told me when we met up in 1971, ‘I think being an author has brought me more satisfaction than being an actor ever did.'

While he had great joy as an author, he had great misery in his marriage. After I first met Hjördis on the second day I spent with David in 1970, he told me, quite casually, ‘Hjördis has a boyfriend. She's had a lover for years.'

She made no apology about taking a lover. She said, ‘What was the point of not having a lover? Our marriage was a sham. Our marriage was a mistake. It didn't work well from the start. David suffocated me. He couldn't help being who he was. He couldn't help it if girls threw themselves at him.'

‘But he could have resisted,' I said. ‘There are some Hollywood stars who have stayed faithful.'

She laughed and said, ‘Tell me who they are. I will marry them.'

David was now earning more money than he had ever done. The royalties from
The Moon's a Balloon
were rolling in, he had a good advance for
Bring on the Empty Horses
, and he earned £40,000 in 1972 for making a series of TV commercials for a Japanese deodorant. His usual fee to make a film was around $200,000.

He was also much in demand as a speaker and gave a series of lectures
in America in October 1972 which not only earned him good money but also continued to boost sales of his book.

Christmas of 1972 was a sad one. Noël Coward had died on 26 March that year, and the joy he brought to the Nivens each Boxing Day was gone forever. Said Hjördis, ‘We were so fond of Noël. His wit and charm made each Boxing Day special. Without him, it was empty.'

The next time I saw David was in April 1973, when he came to London to promote the paperback edition of
The Moon's a Balloon
with a second appearance on the
Michael Parkinson Show
. I was again fortunate to be in the audience, and I met David the next day for lunch. I was still a publicist at Cinerama with aspirations to do greater things, and he encouraged me, ‘Be a writer. There's nothing to it.' I told him I was, having worked with Sheridan Morley on a script for John Huston. That impressed David no end, and I think from then he had a high regard for me.